23 Apr 2010, 7:37 PM

Zero To One (Year)

It’s my blog birthday. On 23 April 2007, after having attended the New Humanism Conference at Harvard, a friend and I started a joint atheism blog. Two years later — which is to say, one year ago today — I struck out on my own, starting this little site here.

Though I haven’t done quite as much yet with this slice of existence as I’d like to, it has nonetheless been an interesting year. I practiced a bit of web design and even built my own web app. I aided in the takedown of a local creationist. I had an editorial published in my alma mater’s student newspaper. And that’s just taken from the meager scraps of life that actually managed to find their way onto this site. In the past year, I’ve attended three skepticism conferences (The Amaz!ng Meeting 7, NECSS2009, and NECSS2010) and become more involved in Boston Skeptics. I’ve been teaching myself how to program in Python. I learned how to play Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. I’ve forged new friendships and strengthened old ones.

But there’s still so much I want to do. So many ideas unrealized.

Ze Frank’s “the show,” a year-long project organized around a daily video blog, was an unexpectedly transformative force for me during its run from March 2006 to 2007. Today, I got to thinking about the episode “bittersweet,” from the last week of the show’s run. This project, this website, made the transition from zero to one a year ago. Zero posts to one post. And from there, a few more. Now that it’s making the transition from zero to one year old, how can I grow and improve?

Ze talks about confidence as it applies to creativity. For me, a big part of it comes down to the confidence to finish starting, to take the final steps in the transition from zero to one. Once you make the transition from “starting” to “doing,” accountability sets in hard. Accountability forces us to get stuff done and make what we do actually count for something, but it also invites judgment if we fail to meet expectations (be they others’ or our own).

In the coming year, I hope to have the confidence to finish starting and start doing.

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23 Apr 2009, 4:50 PM

Hello world!

And so, at long last, I acquire a little space of my own.  It seems only fitting to start off with a hearty “Hello world!”

Though I’m no stranger to blogging, this is my first time self-hosting a website.  The complete and utter freedom is a little daunting, as blank canvasses so often can be, but I’m confident that it won’t take long to settle in.  I’ve already succeeded in putting together my first WordPress theme, after all!  (Clearly, it’s nothing fancy, but it’s functional.  I think.)

Incidentally, don’t be alarmed if the appearance of this site changes from time to time.  One of my major motivations for self-hosting was to have a place to practice some web development skills, a privilege I fully plan to exercise.  Maybe it’ll even give you some additional motivation to drop in from time to time!

I am a skeptic, scientist, atheist, erstwhile actor (oh, how I lament that word “erstwhile”!), occasional cartoonist, and citoyen du monde (NB: I don’t really speak French, but I like to pretend).  So if you’re asking yourself, “What all this about, then?” then the answer is, probably some of that, and also maybe some other stuff.

Posted in: meta | 1 Comment »

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